The present disclosure relates to a device for deactivating defective doors or defective movable steps of a train.
In passenger trains, local trains and underground railways, the door monitoring system usually transmits signals relating to the functional capability and the operating state of doors and movable steps for ease of comprehension, reference will be made herein only to doors, which include doors and steps, unless specific comments regarding steps alone are meant. The signals are transmitted to a central location, for example into the tractive unit, or to the driver of the train or locomotive. The door monitoring system signals the operating state of the doors, and thus also the occurrence of a defect together with the specification of the affected door. If such a fault occurs, the employee who is responsible for this must go to the defective door and lock this door manually and deactivate its door controller. With the often customary large train lengths of 100 or 200 meters and more, this can result in delays and disruption during operation, in particular when there is a dense sequence of trains.
The present disclosure relates to a method and a door controller with which the above-mentioned inconvenient, time-consuming, and in many cases dangerous, activity is dispensed with.
For this purpose, the present disclosure provides that if a fault occurs at a door, the deactivation of the defective door is carried out under remote control by the central monitoring system for the doors. This is done either directly or indirectly by the controller of an assigned, non-defective door.
The device, according to the present disclosure, is of simple design and comprises an activation device for the emergency locking device. The emergency locking device is activated manually according to the prior art. The device can be a motor, a solenoid, etc., but it is essential that its actuation, the control of the emergency locking device, takes place independently of the control of its “own” door since the latter may, of course, under certain circumstances become defective and thus cause the fault. It is therefore necessary to produce a separate connection to the data bus system which extends through the entire train, which does not constitute a problem per se. Usually, at the end of the activation of the emergency locking device, the door is also decoupled from the door controller in order to prevent colliding instructions. This is done in an analogous fashion for the remote-controlled activation of the emergency locking device.
However, it is also necessary to provide a power supply for emergency activation of the door and for the control of the emergency locking device, which is difficult under certain circumstances. In such cases, it is advantageous, for spatial reasons, to attach the fault circuit to the normal door controller of a door located in the vicinity, for example, opposite the affected door. The connection could also be made to the air conditioning system controller or the like, but the aforesaid assignment to the door located in the vicinity is simple and easy to understand.
It therefore, according to the present disclosure, becomes possible not only to detect and locate a defective door centrally, as in the past, but also to deactivate it and disconnect it from the controller.
In cases in which the failure of a door system occurs in the “door wing open” position, the deactivation also comprises the closing process of the door, either the entirety or only the missing part thereof. In order also to solve this problem, in an embodiment according to the present disclosure, the door controller is not only connected to the door drive of its “own” door but also to the door drive of at least one further door, referred to herein as the assigned door. In the case of a defect, the door controller of the intact door then initiates the closing movement of the defective door and controls it.
In an embodiment according to the present disclosure, it is provided that the door which has been deactivated is signaled as unusable to the passengers by an optical device so that at least the passengers who are leaving the train can be provided in good time with the possibility of looking for another exit.
In a further embodiment according to the present disclosure, there is provision, in particular in cars which are already equipped with video monitoring systems, also to use these video monitoring systems to assess the satisfactory deactivation without the employee who is responsible for this having to go in person to the defective door. It is therefore possible, for example, to monitor the satisfactory closing of the door within the course of the deactivation process.
Other aspects of the present disclosure will become apparent from the following descriptions when considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.